Secret Recipe Club: Peanut Butter Cup Pie

So.
Incredibly, it is well before the due date for this recipe and I'm already sitting down to complete my post for the Secret Recipe Club.  The premise of the club is simple:  All people who are a part of the group are assigned another blog from the group, which is a secret, until reveal day.  You go to the blog you've received and make a recipe to reveal.  Easy, right?  Super fun too!
This year, we're home for my birthday.  I didn't want to make a cake that the 2 of us would then be left to eat, but with a deadline looming, I decided to see what I could find on my assigned blog, The Saturday Evening Pot.
Chef Jon's lucky wife Anne is a girl after my own heart - she too loves the combination of chocolate and peanut butter!  After perusing a few recipes, and knowing that eventually I want to make both the healthy Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Blondies and the Raspberry Cinnamon Glazed Loaf Cake, I settled on something decadent that I had everything in the house to make - Peanut Butter Cup Pie.
Okay...I didn't have quite everything in the house, so I improvised.  But the dish didn't change.  And oh, what a dessert it is.
I present to you now the Saturday Evening Pot's Peanut Butter Cup Pie:

Ingredients:
For the Crust:
1-1/2 c chocolate cookie crumbs
1/3 c butter, melted
For the Filling:
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c peanut butter
1/2 c whipping cream, whipped with 2 Tbsp sugar (I took it out of the 1/2 c)
For the Topping:
3/4 c Roasted salted peanuts
2 Tbsp brown sugar
8 Peanut Butter Cups, chopped

Method:
1.  Make the Crust:  Preheat oven to 350F.  In a small bowl, combine crumbs and melted butter.  Stir until everything is moistened.  Press into the bottom and up the sides of a 9" pie pan.  Bake at 350 for 10 minutes to crisp the crust.  Set aside to cool.
2.  Make the Topping:  Turn the broiler on, and line a pan with foil.  Spread the peanuts on the foil, sprinkling with brown sugar.  Place under the broiler and stir frequently, until brown sugar melts.  Remove and let cool completely.
3.  Make the Filling:  In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine sugar (less 2 Tbsp), peanut butter and cream cheese.  Beat until smooth and then turn to high and beat until mousse-like in texture.  With a whisk, beat cream until soft peaks form.  Add reserved sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.  Fold beaten cream into peanut butter mixture.  Pour into cooled crust, and cover with plastic wrap pressed to the surface of the mousse. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
4.  Chop peanut butter cups and sprinkle over chilled pie, followed by the cooled peanuts.  Press lightly into the surface of the pie.

 Adapted from The Saturday Evening Pot

You know how you know when you've chosen a great recipe for Secret Recipe Club?  When it takes all sorts of obscure instruments in your kitchen and dirties every bowl you own.  This is a good recipe.  Here is one of the attachments for my immersion blender:  a whisk.  You want to whip cream fast?  Use this.  I use it very infrequently.  But I loved it here, seeing as it was clean.

I wasn't super neat making the crust.  I was afraid after I started making it that there weren't enough crumbs to get to the top of the sides.  I probably could have done it, but it made for a rustic looking finished product.  Or that's what I tell myself.

Remember the tomato fiasco of the Bacon Cheeseburger Soup?  I was afraid I was going to do the same thing this time.  As you can see, I had a few burnt peanuts to pick out when they cooled.  Next time, I might try using honey-roated and skipping this step.

The filling?  To.  Die.  For.  Who cares about rustic when you can eat this?

And here's the finished product.  So yummy looking, and even more yummy tasting.

Happy birthday to me.

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